


sea change

by thimbleoflight



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-10 23:30:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15302424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thimbleoflight/pseuds/thimbleoflight
Summary: Marcus left Miranda behind on Earth, and returns without his memories.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "Nothing of him that doth fade,  
> But doth suffer a sea-change  
> Into something rich and strange."
> 
> \--William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Miranda Pryce expected a bedraggled, desperate crew–the reports coming back had been… dramatic, to say the least. Colonel Kepler had been a casualty, along with Rachel Young, and Victor Riemann. The plan, at the end, had been thwarted, the signal to send out the Decima virus had never came, and Miranda had spent a sleepless week trying to reach out to the space shuttle.

(And when she  _had_ –when they’d finally,  _finally_  responded back to her messages–it didn’t bear thinking about. Two months ago, that had been, and Miranda had cursed herself every day for not going. The five of them who were returning, the four crew members and–)

She watched the plane that had been deployed to pick them up from the Atlantic ocean land on the tarmac, approached it with a steady stride. She’d had enough time to prepare, after all, and they knew they weren’t leaving the tarmac with him. That was part of the conditions of their escape, and, God, if Marcus were here, he certainly would have managed something that would put Goddard at an advantage. They’d bargained for freedom, for a generous severance package, for the Interim Communications Port for the AI, and in return she had received confidentiality and…

Marcus, or what was left of him, anyway.

Miranda hadn’t cried since she was very very small, and she certainly wasn’t about to begin now, so when they stepped off the plane, blinking in the bright daylight, all she could do was set her face as perfectly blank as possible.

Isabel Lovelace crashed into Renee Minkowski, who had frozen at the sight of them, and Jacobi crashed into her, and then the one that must have been Eiffel nearly tripped over his own feet, looking around in wide-eyed wonder at sights he’d never seen before, and behind them all, meandering down at a slower pace, was Marcus.

She wasn’t… stupid. She hadn’t expected anything, and she didn’t get it, either. There was no flicker of recognition on his face, he glanced at her once, and past her just as easily to the assistant she’d brought along with her, and then his gaze tracked further back, to the tarmac, and then, up to the sky, where it remained as Clarke spoke.

“Hephaestus crew,” Clarke addressed them, “you will find that there is a driver present to take you back to the lodgings that Goddard has set up. From there, you’ll be given instructions on how to proceed with collecting your half of the bargain, and due to the clerical errors that Dr. Pryce may have mentioned, we’ve had some delays in processing your paperwork for your return and making sure that your old lives would be… available to you, but for now, we’d like you to hand over Mr. Cutter. We trust that he’s in good condition.”

“Very good condition,” said Marcus. “They’ve been kind to me.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Miranda, before she thought about it, and every eye turned to her. “Marcus Cutter, I am Dr. Miranda Pryce.”

“Yes,” he said, and though he looked at her still like she was a stranger, this did seem to register, “they told me you would be picking me up. It  _is_  good to know that I had a home to come back to. Thank you.”

He was on his best behavior, she recognized it easily. How quaint.

Clark took the others, and good riddance. Miranda walked back to the airport with him in tow.

“They told me I don’t have anyone to pick me up, besides you,” said Marcus, looking at her curiously. “No family, no spouse.”

She nodded.

“I’m a specialist with Goddard Futuristics on your unique situation. I will be keeping you under observation at Goddard Futuristic’s medical bay for the time being, until we deem you fit to go home. I believe you’ll find that they’re comfortable quarters.”

They were designed for him, after all, no expense spared.

“That’s kind of you. The others told me that Goddard had  _not_  been kind to them. I really couldn’t believe some of the things that they said!”

She could feel the way that he watched her expression as he spoke. Ah, so he was suspicious, and those silly crew members had told him all about what it meant to work for Goddard from the position of the grunts. How pathetic.

“You and I have been–” she tried not to choke on the words, “business partners for most of our careers. I was your emergency contact back on Earth.”

 _And the beneficiary of your will_ , she thought,  _your primary care physician…_

She could see the suspicion flicker across his face. Paperwork could be forged, the conditions of the Hephaestus crew were what he had been introduced to when he came into existence. He must have thought she was bringing him back for testing, for experimentation.

He wouldn’t be wrong.

But the others had given him up so willingly. That, she’d thought, would be the key. She’d have to keep an eye on him. He no longer had his old clearance, compromised as he was, but he would want to  _know_. He wasn’t the man that she was familiar with, and he’d never be that man again, but then–well, she’d always been good at making improvements. She didn’t like to do them without Marcus’s explicit permission, of course… which was the part that made this difficult.

She’d given it some thought.  _Her_  Marcus would approve her trying to bring him back, but this was the Marcus that she had now, which meant, unfortunately, that this was the Marcus that she had to deal with. She’d have to determine a profile of him, and then she could make a plan, introduce elements of his old life as applicable or eliminate him, if he was going to be a problem.

She swallowed.

It had to be considered, but she would gather information first. It was too early to make that kind of decision, too early to even give the situation that kind of thought. Miranda would be unsentimental, and slow to make the decision. She’d always been good at that, too.

She gestured at her car, and he got in, obediently, on the right-hand side.

“Miranda, right?” he asked. “Can I call you Miranda?”

It was a hot summer day, in Cape Canaveral, and the car was unpleasant–and she had a  _lot_  of work ahead of her, but suddenly, she found herself smiling.

“No,” she said, “that would be Dr. Pryce, to you.”

For now.


	2. Chapter 2

He allowed her to poke and prod at him, and he silently waited as she entered everything into her computer.

After a few moments, it seemed to become too much for him. He sat up on the exam table, feet dangling over the side, and he let them swing idly, staring around at the cool blue walls of the room, the various anatomy posters. They were more to give the impression of a doctor’s office than any real use in his case. Marcus had always thought that things ought to look like what they were, as much as be the things that they were.

“Dr. Pryce?”

“Yes?” she said.

It was hard, actually, not to treat him like the old Marcus. It helped that he didn’t call her by name, but that didn’t mean that when she looked at him, she didn’t _see_ the old Marcus. She should have left this to another doctor, or to one of her AIs, but there was no one else.

“So what’s the sitch?”

She waited a moment before she replied,

“Physically, you’re in great health,” she told him, and he perked up. He was just as chatty as she remembered, all smiles and easy light conversation. She’d put together a file for him of Marcus Cutter’s personal history, not having wanted to go into the… new selves, though of course he would have been aware that there were certain upgrades.

Though just how aware wasn’t clear. Douglas Eiffel would have known, in the brief moments before overloading the system had wiped both of their memories, when the two of them were sharing.

(If only she’d been there!)

“And no way to restore what’s been lost?” he asked, and she shook her head, continuing to type. Minor variations in bone density between pre-spaceflight and post… Nothing unexpected, of course, nothing avoidable, even with her technology.

“I’m afraid not.”

Miranda had never been very good with psychological health, but Marcus had never really asked that of her. The exam table squeaked under him, the paper set on top of it crinkling as he shifted to cross one leg over the other.

“How strange, that you can have all of this and yet–”

“If this had happened five years down the line, I would have had the technology,” she said, and he raised his eyebrows.

“I see.”

He leaned back on the table.

“What is your specialty, really, Dr. Pryce? I thought it was AI Engineering, but you’re just as good at being a doctor for… organic bodies.”

When you’re 60 years old with the funding of Goddard Futuristics behind you, you can get a wide berth of degrees in any field you like.

But that wasn’t really true. Her specialty had been him, and all of the upgrades he’d needed. Anything she’d done for Goddard had been a side project.

“In order to understand AIs, we have to understand what we’re trying to recreate,” she said, finally. “There are plenty of artificial intelligences who look nothing like humanity–they are conscious, exert a will of their own, they have a sense of self, and yet were we to try to communicate with them we would find them exceedingly alien. My initial task was to recreate humanity. Androids, so to speak, not mere consciousness. Something that could reasonably do the work that humans do, with all of the messy, emotional labor that entails, but… better. More efficiently.”

“That’s a tall order.”

“You gave it,” she said, “and I am very good at my job.”

“And what was my job? I know it says Director of Communications, but… come on. There’s not a job description for that, is there?”

“You won’t be getting your old job back,” she said. “So I don’t suppose you need to know, do you?”

“But one wonders, doesn’t one?” he asked. “Come on, I’m not asking for company secrets.”

He actually was, but she could hardly tell him that.

She sighed, and relented.

“You facilitated communication between all of the departments. When one department needed information, or needed to be kept aware of the work of another, you made sure that happened. You were, essentially, a project manager for most of the company. You worked most closely with my division, AI Research and Development, as well as Special Projects, and the corporate intelligence division.”

“My, my–I had my fingers in all of the pies, didn’t I?”

“That was the point. Someone had to.”

“A mind like that is a terrible thing to waste,” he said, sounding just like his old self. “Gosh.”

Gosh, indeed. Miranda eyed him carefully, but, pretended to keep typing. She could see the goosebumps running up his arm, with her eyesight, wondered what that meant. Was it too cold in here, or was he–?

“So that’s why you can’t tell me about what I did,” he said. “You’re afraid I’ll go running off and give all the secrets to… well, whoever will pay me. And that’s why you won’t let me leave here. Because you think that there are people out there who think I still have all of that information.”

“Correct.”

Ah, wait.

“So I can’t leave.”

…Damn!

“Well, I don’t have it,” he said, “and you know that. So what are you planning to do?”

She rolled her chair away from the computer, and leaned against the side of it, placing her chin on her hand.

“You’ve concisely outlined my problem at the moment, Mr. Cutter.”

“And I was your business partner,” he said. “What does that mean?”

“It means that you entrusted me to make the correct decision for the company. And you are, in fact, my problem.”

She’d thought about that answer for a very long time, over the past few months. She’d known–Marcus would come back to her, she’d known that, at some point, after giving the justification that she had been his business partner and the person he’d chosen to take care of his affairs–she’d known that she’d have to tell him something. That she’d have to give him some kind of explanation.

She could hardly say what they had been to one another. There weren’t words for it, or if there were, they’d all sound crass, or too specific, not broad enough to encompass–

She couldn’t think about how long it had been. She couldn’t think about him.

“Why you?” he asked. “Why not the rest of the board of directors?”

“Is this an inquisition?”

“I think I’ve earned the right to some answers,” he said, coolly, and, oh, she hated that tone. She’d hated it since 1970, when she heard it first.

“You wanted progress,” she said. “And so did I. They wanted money. You always–you were willing to spend more, in the hopes of a bigger return.”

“In the four years I’d spent running memos from one department to another?”

Was she to give him all of the answers in one fell swoop, just because he asked? She shouldn’t have given him anything! She was furious with herself. He would’ve been furious with her too, if he saw this.

“Yes,” she said, coolly, “you did, in the four years you spent running memos. You also directed board meetings, you helped plan the projects, you brought together the minds that made it happen. Like you put it, you had a finger in every pie. You earned your place in this company. That is why you are here now, and not dead. Do you understand?”

He didn’t speak.

“Your tests are complete for the day,” she said, and stood up. “We would like you to remain here for the week for observation.”

“Oh, Dr. Pryce, I think we can call it safekeeping.”

“I think you’ll find it comfortable.”

“It is.”

She sighed. He gazed up at her, with a positively insouciant frown on his face. Whatever she said, whatever she did, he’d be ready to wisecrack about it.

Had she taken his respect for granted? It was a sickening thought. She tried to search his face for any of that old sympathy he’d always tried to give her, any of that deference to her opinion in matters of the medical or technological type. She didn’t find any, and cleared her throat.

“You’ll also find a selection of movies that your old self preferred, along with other options as well. There is also a fridge stocked with foods that your old self had listed out to be prepared for your stays here. Please feel free to peruse them, and… do call me if you need anything.”

She’d stayed here with him on more than one occasion.

“Thank you,” he said, and she felt her shoulders sink in relief. No wisecracks.

(No pleas for her to stay, no sly smile. She felt, again, that terrible ache in her chest…)

“Goodnight, Mr. Cutter,” she said.

“Goodbye, Dr. Pryce.”


	3. Chapter 3

The light up ahead turned yellow and she slowed, while Marcus fiddled with the radio. Eventually he settled on something classical, a fast-paced orchestra in a major key, triumphant. He probably would have been able to identify it, at one point.

It was silent in the car, and for the most part, he looked out the window. They hadn’t been able to charter a plane to this middle-of-nowhere, backwater Midwestern town, and, at any rate, Miranda felt as though doing so would be too conspicuous. Goddard would notice, and it was exactly the point that they did not.

“Thank you for taking me,” said Marcus, again, as they pulled up to the house.

“It’s my job,” she said, flatly, and if it wasn’t a gracious acceptance of his thanks, well, at least she’d acknowledged him.

Miranda hadn’t wanted to lock him up away in Goddard, not really, not forever, once she realized how much of his own mind if not his memories he retained. Though Marcus certainly could not be free, she refused to be his jailer. Once, years and years ago, he’d made her watch an old mostly-silent movie, with a great deal of swordfighting and a French king locked away, a masked twin of a usurper, a prisoner in the palace he ought to have been running.

Marcus, though not himself, shouldn’t have to be a specter haunting Goddard’s halls.

But did he have to take the freedom Miranda offered him with the condition of her accompaniment, and come _here?_ She felt her face twist as she looked up at the little house, designed in the carpenter gothic style, already long dated by the time that it had been built. It was an ugly place, too small for four people and an AI unit, but that had been the terms of their surrender of Marcus and she had let them go. Ugh.

To think Unit 214 was wasting its time running _this_ place. To think that Marcus wanted to visit them here. To think that Marcus Cutter, the man who had run Goddard Futuristics, thought of an amnesiac convict as his… _friend_.

Maybe they’d impress her. Perhaps the AI had fixed things up. These ugly old houses, once you knew the setup, could be modernized. She shut the door of the car, and stepped up onto the porch, the boards creaking under her feet, which was less heartening. Indeed, everything needed to be repainted, everything needed to be rewired, everything needed to be replaced, she thought, it was rotting from the inside out, and no one had ever wanted to do all of that work.

She hated these homes.

“Well, you’d better knock,” she said, gesturing to him. “You’re the one visiting, after all.”

He cocked his head.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” she said.

He stepped up to the door, and rapped against it three times. There was a brief pause, and then a flicker across the peephole of the door.

“Oh, hey,” said a voice that Miranda recognized as Eiffel. “He’s here! Um, he brought Dr. Pryce.”

“Had to,” said Marcus, giving the peephole his most winning smile. “Sorry, bud.”

The latch clicked as Eiffel unlocked it, and opened the door, and they were let into the ugly little house. It hadn’t been modernized, and there were cobwebs, she was sure, from approximately 1950 still on the walls.

“Um, have a seat, is there anything you want to drink?”

“No,” said Miranda.

“Water would be great, thanks!” said Marcus, brightly. Eiffel returned with two glasses, one for himself, and one for Marcus, and sat down on the couch. It wasn’t a comfortable couch, but she supposed, it did look cheap, which probably mattered to them at this point. She looked out the window as they began to chatter, feeling her heart race, and trying to stop herself from clenching her teeth.

“—Oh, yeah, Pulp Fiction!” said Eiffel, cheerfully. “I watched that one last week!”

Miranda thought she would die if she had to listen to the two of them talk movies for an hour. That’d been something that Marcus did, indeed, love to do, and perhaps it would have been comforting to hear, under different circumstances.

But she didn’t want to be here, in this awful little old farmhouse, looking out over an endless expanse of prairie. They didn’t talk about their brains, she noticed, they didn’t talk about what they did or didn’t remember. They talked… about television, and movies. What they’d seen and what they wanted to see.

She rolled her eyes, and rested her elbow on the couch, scanning the house.

There were speakers set up in each corner of the room, and—ah, yes, there it was. A camera, in the upper right hand corner, just behind the speaker. Almost unnoticeable if one wasn’t paying attention to the fact that there was no television to play sound through the speakers. She smiled, and gave the camera a nod. No effect on the surrounding room, of course, but she knew. So they had made some changes for the AI unit.

A movement in the kitchen caught her eye, and she looked up to see Lieutenant Minkowski opening the fridge, and pulling out a bright red can of soda. Minkowski came and stood at the doorway of the living room, trying to open her soda over the tile instead of over the ugly green carpet, as Miranda watched—

She started when she saw Miranda looking.

“Well?” Miranda said. “Won’t you come and join us?”

Several different expressions flickered over Minkowski’s face—annoyance, at Miranda’s rudeness no doubt, and, ah, yes, there it was. Fear. What had the AI unit told them?

Minkowski came and sat down, across from Miranda, in a chair.

Ah. She was braver than Miranda had expected.

“So,” said Minkowski. “How has…”

She trailed off, and Miranda smiled.

“As if I would tell you what I have been working on.”

The men’s conversation briefly paused, an interruption in the rhythm of the conversation, and then picked up again.

“Okay,” said Minkowski.

“Has the AI unit settled back in comfortably? You’re probably still using the ICP,” said Miranda. “Hooked it up to the rest of the house.”

Instantly, Minkowski’s shoulders went rigid. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

“If it works,” said Minkowski.

“You’re keeping a goldfish in a bowl,” said Miranda.

“What?”

“Do you know how much water a goldfish requires to thrive?” said Miranda.

“I thought you were supposed to keep goldfish in bowls,” said Minkowski.

“Hm.”

Miranda yawned.

“You could ask her yourself how she’s doing,” said Minkowski. “She can hear you. Hera?”

“Oh, I don’t think we want to find out what happens when I talk to it,” said Miranda, sweetly. “I think we’ll find out that you never removed my controls.”

Minkowski went silent, and Marcus shot Miranda a look.

Minkowski stood up, and said, abruptly, “well, I have to go… check on Lovelace. Have a nice day.”

And Miranda was left alone again, unsure if this was better or worse than the previous situation. Eiffel and Marcus continued to prattle on, about a “dude” in another movie they had both recently watched.

She waited, and listened, but they never, ever, once mentioned the Hephaestus.

* * *

 

“Was your playdate everything you hoped it would be?” asked Miranda, once they were back in the car.

“You sound… cranky,” said Marcus, raising an eyebrow at her.

There wasn’t any nervousness in his voice, nothing that indicated that he felt at all as though her anger was a problem for him. Good, she thought, savagely, because it wasn’t.

“I want to get out of this place,” said Miranda.

She flipped on her turn signal with more aggression than was likely necessary, and moved one lane over, much to the chagrin, she suspected, of the driver of the silver Honda civic behind her (now). It would have been so easy to deny him this, to forbid any contact with them. But she couldn’t. She’d lost the AI, and she’d lost Marcus.

“If I asked you to,” said Marcus, “would you build a proper facility for the AI unit there for them?”

She snorted. He turned away, to face out the window. Corn fields. In the distance, there were dark clouds, over hills. Miranda remembered seeing similar landscapes from her childhood, remembering the other children crying about thunder, and asking the adults if there was going to be a storm. They’d never been very good at answering, which had been surprising, since once you understood the general mechanics of weather it was easy enough to predict, with a barometer and a few other instruments.

Another helpful “friend” that Miranda had made for herself had alleviated that, displaying the chance of storms and rain and thunder, whenever it was asked. She didn’t need it now to know that she and Marcus wouldn’t be caught in any inclement weather.

“Oh, you’re serious,” she said.

“Deadly so, I’m afraid.”

Ah. This wasn’t a conversation for the car, but apparently, they were having it here.

“That place isn’t capable of it.”

“Are you sure?”

He’d always left these kinds of things to her! He’d always trusted her! She wasn’t going to go in and fix up that dinky little house, for the people who had taken—

“One thing to keep in mind,” she said, finally, “when it comes to artificial intelligence, I can be absolutely sure.”

“Of course you’re sure,” he said, finally, with just an air of doubt in his voice.

“It would take approximately three days,” she said, “and resources that they don’t have, I can assure you.”

She knew what his answer would be, of course. She was beginning to understand this new Marcus.

“Dr. Pryce,” he said, and there was an earnestness to his tone. “I want to know what we can do.”

 _I want you to build me a doll, and it must be your very best doll_.

“You feel responsible for them. But they wiped your memory,” she said.

“And they took care of me.”

“That was supposed to be my job,” she snapped.

“Did you ever go to space?”

“Of course not.”

“But you wrote the manual on it.”

“You handled the space aspects of each tip.”

“So you don’t know what it was like, not really.”

She couldn’t answer that, couldn’t look him in the eye, could only focus on the road ahead of them—they’d take a plane back to Florida, and then she’d be done with this.

“They rationed food to make sure I was fed. They gave me clothing, they gave me quarters to stay in. They kept me company. Dr. Pryce, whatever we did to them, they _saved_ me. You’ve rationalized the work that Goddard did, I can see that, but I am afraid that I have… really lost the plot, by comparison! I really want to make sure that Hera is comfortable, you know? That’s all I’m asking. What does it take?”

She ballparked a financial figure for him, in the range of the tens of thousands, without needling him about using the name for the AI unit. He’d given it the name, after all.

“Of course, that’s pocket change to you,” she said, dry as ice. “Even with the restrictions on your accounts.”

He whistled.

“I’ll pay you twice that,” he said. “Just to set it up, and then I’ll give you the funds as well. How’s that? Do we have a deal?”

She stiffened, hearing the salesman in his voice again, for the first time. It wasn’t the money. It had never been about the money, between them.

“I’ll consider it.”

“Or what is it that you do want?”

She scoffed.

It wasn’t about what _she_ wanted. She wanted the old him back, of course, the one who didn’t want to traipse off and visit some sorry crew who’d failed their mission and destroyed company property. She wanted Marcus Cutter, not... this impostor wearing his face, speaking _his_ words with _his_ inflections, and yet saying things that he’d never say.

She could say no, she supposed. He wasn’t in his right mind, and of course, if he was back to himself, he’d never ask for this.

And yet.

It _wasn’t_ that she’d never hear the end of it, if she refused, though of course, that was true.

It was that Marcus always had a plan. It was that she’d always wanted to see that plan through until the end. It was that, if she went back to Canaveral with him, if she locked him away and refused to let him out, it really would _be_ the end, of everything they’d ever worked for. It was an end that Miranda couldn’t bear.

“Fine. I’ll do it, at that price.”

He laughed.

“You never negotiated very well, did you?”

“No,” she said, “I always left that to you.”


	4. Chapter 4

There was no neutral ground, which meant that when Unit 214, Cutter, and Miranda met to discuss their options, they did so in the little basement of the house of the Hephaestus crew. 

Miranda had insisted on the basement so as to have access to the keyboard and interface which controlled the Sensus unit, as well as for the privacy that it afforded. She had no idea how Cutter had spoken to the AI unit in order to get here even in the first place, but then, she’d never been party to the sales side of things. It had been Marcus who concerned himself with that.

“Okay,” said the AI, “I’ve agreed to this talk, but she has to be civil.”

“Oh, I can assure you,” said Cutter, confidently, “we will shut this down if things go south. No, no! We’ll have a civil discussion.”

Miranda looked at him, wondering if that confidence was fair.

“So, what do you have to offer?”

“Full access to the house, the same kinds of controls that you would have had on the station. Atmospheric, control over the doors, running the water systems and the gas and electric lines. Cameras set up, so that you could see and hear everything, and speak to anyone in the rooms. Marginally less life-or-death control, but the ability to be where you’d like to be, all at once. You could put out a fire on the stove, shut off access to the water lines in the event of a leak. Internet connectivity would give you more mobility, there are AI assistants who interact through an app on a cell phone with their—”

Miranda paused.

“Associates,” Unit 214 clarified. “My associates would carry me around in their pocket?”

“In essence,” said Miranda. “And, in addition, we would provide any other upgrades you deemed necessary.”

“I see.” 

She ran her hands along the keyboard. It was covered in a fine layer of dust.

“Your friends haven’t been down here to see you in a while, have they?” she asked. “Do they realize that this is you?”

“Oh, shut up,” said Unit 214, and the lights flickered. “I’m everywhere to them. They don’t need to—”

“Hm,” said Miranda. “So they don’t really understand your corporeal form. That must be a shame, really. Do they think you’re just a plug-and-play appliance? Well, they’re not wholly wrong, of course... but it must be frustrating.” 

“—Oh, play nice!” said Cutter, to Miranda, but the lights in the basement flickered, and then there was a horrible fizzing noise, a snapping pop in the speakers, and then the lights went out. Shortly, the basement door opened, a bright square with a Minkowski-shaped silhouette in the center of it.

“Hey! Explain what the hell’s going on down there!”

There was another crackle, and the speakers went back online.

“It’s fine, Lieutenant,” said Unit 214, “I’m fine. We’re just talking.” 

“Interesting,” said Miranda. Her heels scraped against the cement floors of the basement. It really was rather dark down here, wasn’t it, even with the lights back on? And it smelled like dirt. Not that that would matter to the AI unit, of course. It was just inhospitable for any humans who might want to perform any upkeep for her. If they even knew what that entailed.

But it was cold, and of all of the places in the house, she supposed, it made the most sense to store the ICP here. She’d set up its chassis here, to take the place of the ICP, like one of those old-style computers that she’d gotten used to working on in the 1960s, the kind that took up several basements and needed to be kept at an absolutely frigid temperature. Frankly, it would feel a little nostalgic.

The good old days, back when the Sensus Units never spoke back. Well, that was the trouble with AI. It could see things that you didn’t, and it could _say_ things that you didn’t expect, either. 

“Really, Minkowski,” said Unit 214. “You can leave.”

“If you say so, Hera.”

The lights flickered back online, and the door shut.

“If you’re done having your little _temper tantrum_ ,” said Miranda, “we’d like to get back to business.”

“I’m fine,” said Unit 214. “I can carry on. Keep talking.”

“Well, I’ll be on hand, of course,” said Cutter.

“And what’s in it for her?” demanded Unit 214.

“Money,” said Cutter, at the same time as Miranda said, “That’s none of your concern.”

She glanced at Cutter. That was probably a better answer, anyway. It wasn’t strictly true, but it would have stopped any curiosity.

“Oh,” said Unit 214. “Yes, money. I’m starting to hear about how important that is more and more, these days.”

Miranda shrugged.

“It won’t be yours to lose, and it’ll benefit you. I’d suggest that you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Mr. Cutter is being very generous with you, and frankly, I don’t agree with it.”

“Oh, I know why he’s doing it,” said Unit 214. “He feels guilty. Strange, since it wasn’t really him who—”

Cutter’s lips twitched in a small, pained smile.

“—Oh, you don’t want that,” said Miranda, delighted. “If it isn’t Marcus Cutter before you here today, then the man that you’re calling Douglas Eiffel isn’t your little friend.”

Unit 214 was silent for a moment.

“Don’t ever talk about Eiffel again like that,” she said, finally, “and we have a deal.”

“Smart,” said Miranda. “I’ll take it.”

“Perfect!” said Cutter, all back to smiles and sunshine. He clapped his hands together. “Miranda and I will arrange for a vacation from our duties at Goddard, and come back to make sure that we get you all set up! I’ll be in contact with you. Keep your schedule clear!”

“I’d shake hands,” said Miranda, “but, well. You know.”

“Mr. Cutter,” said Unit 214, and it was almost cute, the way that it said spoke pleadingly, as if it expected Cutter to jump in and rescue it.

It would have been cute, except for the fact that Cutter _did_. Cutter placed a hand on Miranda’s arm, and she jerked it out of his reach. There was a placid, cool expression on his face, and she realized that she was overstepping her bounds. Too like himself, and too not—in the olden days, he would have let her—!

She took a deep breath. _He’s not Marcus_ , she reminded herself, _Unit 214 is right,_ but somehow, it didn’t prevent her from feeling as though she’d been rebuked. 

And why did he want to impress this AI, anyway? Why did it want Cutter to be different? What was the point?

Miranda turned on her heel, and headed back up the stairs.


	5. Chapter 5

Miranda watched him look around the restaurant, the way that his eyes flicked over the tables and the sconces on the wall, the way that his face relaxed into that easy, calm expression that she knew so well.

“You’re expecting me to recognize this place.”

He flipped through the menu.

“Guilty,” she said. “Do you?”

He shook his head.

“Worth the effort, at least,” she said, and they were seated at the table.

“Is this the sort of place that I liked?”

She shrugged.

She’d thought, perhaps, that this conversation was one they’d have earlier on. After he went through the cowboy movies on the shelves at Goddard’s medical facility—where he was still staying, she couldn’t think of letting him leave just yet—after he looked through the closets to see all of his old clothes, which didn’t quite fit right any more. He’d lost weight in space, in a way that didn’t make him look well. It was strange to see him, such a lover of food, looking so very nearly ill.

But of course, taking him out for a single meal wouldn’t fix that. No, she’d taken him here because she’d wanted him to see this place, at least once, before their trip to remodel the AI’s living quarters.

They would be leaving next week. Miranda had long since accustomed herself to Cutter’s jetsetter lifestyle, and, she supposed, it almost made sense that he retained that same vigor. (She’d always felt rather like a train car, hitched onto an engine that never met a hill too steep.)

“It’s the sort of place that I liked,” she said, eventually. “Nothing complicated. Very... straightforward menu choices. But expensive enough for your tastes.”

“I see.” He looked through the list of wines. “Did I like wine?”

“Yes.”

“Do you?”

This had been a longstanding point of contention between the two of them, before.

“I prefer... things that are sweeter.”

He smiled.

“Ah! A picky palate. Did I know this?”

“You never would have bothered to try to persuade me to taste anything, if that’s what you’re asking,” said Miranda.

If she’d been curious regarding the taste of something, she’d have taken his glass right out of his hands. She tried not to think of how many times she’d done that, in this very restaurant. He laughed.

This had been a bad route of conversation to go down, she decided. It had been a poor choice, on her part, to take him here. Why had she done it? She knew he wouldn’t remember anything. She hadn’t expected him to magically... look around, and remember their dinners here, to see the decorations and say,  _ah, yes, Miranda, it’s all coming back to me now_ —

“Okay, so. Recommend something to me on this menu.”

“French onion soup,” she said, immediately. It had been his favorite. He waved a hand at her, and she felt herself purse her lips at the gesture.

“Oh, always a classic. Try again!”

She looked at the menu.

Some seafood, some steak, all things he’d loved, usually just as much for the price tag as for the taste. (She was sure no one could  _really_  love shrimp, with all of its obvious little veins and ugly, crunchy little tails.) Some vegetarian dishes... no, he wouldn’t care for that, she thought.

“The lamb,” she said, finally, and he made a noncommittal, but not displeased noise. It looked... light. Not too spicy, though Marcus had never minded spice. She tried to remember if she’d seen him order it before, and couldn’t recall.

“With butternut squash,” he read from the menu, thoughtfully. “Hm. Could be interesting!”

She sighed, and sat back, looking over her own menu.

“What will you order?” he asked.

“There’s a... breaded chicken dish,” she said, finally.

“I see. With mashed potatoes.” He peered over his menu at her, as if seeing her for very nearly the first time. “Not very daring, is it?”

She flipped the page, and ignored him, poring over the drink options as though they meant anything to her. It wasn’t as if this new Cutter could get to her, when the old one couldn’t, she thought, it wasn’t as if his opinions mattered—whether he disliked her attitude, or questioned her food choices, it didn’t mean anything.

“If you say so,” she said, coolly.

But he was still looking at her, unfazed. She’d never minded being the focus of his attention before. He’d never have dared to tell her that she wasn’t being interesting enough with her food choices, he’d always been indulgent of her quirks.

She flicked her hair back over her shoulder, and let him stare. Good. Keep him busy, keep him interested, and he wouldn’t be asking questions about himself.

“You can try some of mine, if you like,” he said, eventually, and she scoffed. He hardly let himself appear disappointed. “Oh, boo! You don’t have to, it’s just an offer.”

When their food came, she had to admit, his really did look good. He thanked the waiter, and ordered a glass of Chardonnay for himself. She only realized that she was watching him when he closed his eyes, savoring his first mouthful of lamb, and hastily moved to slice her own chicken and appear busy with her food.

“Is that what you always get?” he asked.

“Hm? Oh, yes,” she said, eventually.

“A creature of habit.”

She shrugged.

Scent, she thought, unbidden, was the sense most closely tied to memory, and it, in turn, was tied to taste. A smell from childhood could bring a person back to a specific moment, could overwhelm someone with emotion, even if they did not clearly remember anything tied to that emotion. A guardian’s perfume or cologne, a cleaning solution used in a school or other public place that the person frequented, or even an air freshener.

He’d never ordered the lamb that she could recall, she thought, so he wouldn’t recognize it. She’d suggested the French onion soup, because it should have been familiar to him—but he hadn’t even  _wanted_  it. Why had she said the lamb dish?

“Really, try some!” Cutter said, and sliced off a piece of the lamb, and pushed his plate towards her. She speared it on the end of her fork, and, after preparing herself for a moment, tasted it. Miranda couldn’t have told cinnamon from cumin, couldn’t even begin to guess at the mix of spices involved, but he was right. It was almost sweet, instead of savory... her chicken very nearly bland by comparison.

Then again, that was why she’d wanted the chicken, after all.

“Not bad,” she said, eventually, stole a piece of squash as well out of habit, and then, immediately afterwards, felt as though she’d—

He hadn’t remembered anything, no matter what her (dare she say it?) hopes had been when she’d brought him here. She should have controlled herself more carefully, kept a tighter rein on her own impulses. And now, he was watching her, with a small smile on his lips. But there was surprise, too, in his expression, even if it was pleased surprise.

“Apologies,” she said, “I forgot myself.”

“You’re funny,” he said, and it was worse, somehow, that he  _wasn’t_  annoyed. “It’s good to see you having a little fun every now and then, Doctor!”

“I’ve never had any fun in my life,” she said, sharply, and tried not to be satisfied when he laughed.

 


	6. Chapter 6

Her suitcase rumbled as it rolled across the boards of the porch.

They’d signed for the packages that she’d sent, she could see the stacks of them through the window, of course, all the two-dozen packages, and it appeared as though the entirety of the equipment that she would need had arrived. But she could also see, as the figures just barely visible through the screens made their way to the door, they gave the stacked boxes a wide berth.

When the door opened, finally, with the barest greeting from Minkowski, she crossed the threshold again into the tiny little house, with its watery pale color scheme—dusty and gray like this entire place. She was met by the three others, Lovelace, Eiffel, and Jacobi, all with their arms folded, like some sort of security task force.

“Good afternoon!” said Cutter. “Really, it’s just the nicest trip up here, isn’t it! So quaint, I thought so last time too. And the weather is just lovely today.”

They stared at him.

“Make small talk with the man, for Christ’s sake,” said Miranda, waving a hand, and moving over to begin opening the boxes. “And get me a garbage bag or twelve, there’s going to be a lot of packing peanuts.”

No one made small talk. Jacobi left, and reappeared with a small roll of plastic bags. She flipped one out, feeling their eyes on her.

Good. Let them stare. Maybe they’d learn something worth a damn.

“If I meant her any harm, you couldn’t do anything,” said Miranda, which made them all scowl harder, except Cutter, whose bright grin faltered for just a moment.

And if she did the AI any harm, Cutter wouldn’t forgive her.

“Are we really supposed to be letting her in?” said Jacobi.

Minkowski shook her head.

“It’s all right,” said Unit 214.

“You’d really like the upgrade, wouldn’t you?” asked Miranda. “I can imagine you’re just dying to decompress your neural sensors.”

“Look,” said Minkowski, “just do whatever you need to do. I know it’s going to take you a couple of days—”

“Thank you for understanding. Now, leave,” said Miranda. Minkowski and Lovelace gave each other an impressively unsubtle glare. Miranda waved a hand at them. “Shoo.”

“Oh, no,” said Minkowski, “you  _won’t_  be unsupervised.”

“No,” said Miranda. “I’ll keep... oh, eenie-meenie-miney— _Eiffel_. And Cutter, of course. I need an extra couple pairs of hands.”

“What for?” asked Minkowski.

“The ICP is a thumb drive,” said Miranda, though the metaphor was poor at best. “I’m turning your house into a hard drive  _and_  a processor. Believe me, I’ve done this before. It’s not hard.”

They’d give Unit 214 an interface to work from. It would have the atmospheric controls that it had on the Hephaestus, but with rather less life-or-death responsibility. Better weather tracking, to suit the area, and information about traffic or news, if it liked. It would have limited control and visibility in the private areas of the house, but it would depend on what the inhabitants of the room wanted, if they wanted to let the AI have full control or visibility.

Miranda could close her eyes and imagine it, the way that it would feel to  _be_  a house. She could only conceive of it only in metaphor—a terrible, human limitation on her own part—but which served her well for the purpose of programming these things. Connected to any cell phones that the crew had, for the purposes of communication while out of the house, or any emergencies within as well.

“And when you’re done...?”

“I’ll let you know,” said Miranda. “I’ll start with one of the main rooms this afternoon. I intend to waste no time. I want to be out of here as much as you’d like me out of here as well.”

“Do we get a choice?” asked Minkowski. “In the room that you pick.”

“You can state a preference,” said Miranda.

“The living room, if possible. So Hera can be properly hooked up to one of the main rooms.”

“Ah,” said Miranda. “You think I’m going to leave before it’s done.”

There was silence.

“We’ll start with the living room, won’t we, Dr. Pryce?” asked Cutter, which meant, probably, that it was the right thing to do, and that she wouldn’t ruffle any further feathers by agreeing.

“Yes,” said Miranda.

“I promise,” said the AI unit, “it’s okay.”

This was enough, finally, to let Miranda alone—for Minkowski and Lovelace and Jacobi to leave.

She set the additional memory drives in place down in the basement, which took all of five minutes. An ICP, though not an ideal container, could be converted to a decent chassis, and the portability of it would make it possible for the others to move the AI unit to a new location or to remove it quickly in the event of a natural disaster.

A few additional exabytes of available random access memory never hurt anyone, and she was gratified to hear the chatter of the AI unit trying to explain how any of this worked to an increasingly glazed-over Eiffel. She’d add more over the next few days, as each room was added, and finally, a few more to help the AI unit cope with the additional workload and connections to maintain.

Miranda set Cutter and Eiffel to the task of finding all of the wires in the packaging, and searching out appropriate places in the walls and corners to hang cameras and speakers, the optimal places for the atmospheric gauges, the pneumatic systems which would push a door open or pull it shut, or do the same for a window, depending on what the AI needed to do.

(Miranda thought of ghost stories as she wired all of this, the tales that the children in the orphanage had used to tell each other about murders that had happened on these farmlands, temperatures dropping and doors that shut of their own accord. It had been so easy to make those tales come true.)

Activating it all would prove the harder part, or at least, the part that could not be left to anyone else. Miranda kept the connection of the various wires to herself, because the men wouldn’t know what to do even if she’d written out _ICP to Chassis Transfer For Dummies_.

The living room took an hour of blessed silence. The sun began to set, shining through the window, and the room got warmer, but not quite unpleasantly so. It began to feel a little bit more like Cape Canaveral summer, muggy in a way that made Miranda feel at home. When they were done, the sun was dipping below the horizon.

“It’ll take a few minutes to boot properly,” said Miranda.

“Well, in the meantime, it might be best if you took a look,” said Cutter.

Miranda inspected their work. Eiffel didn’t speak much, throughout the process, but she noted that he seemed to have—though there were a few errors—rather well grasped the concept of wiring the room for the AI’s presence. It was easy enough to see that, though his memory of people and events and pop culture was mainly gone, a great deal of the technical know-how that had made Goddard notice him as a potential communications officer remained.

...Perhaps she  _could_  have left some of the activation process to him.

Or, more interestingly, perhaps they wouldn’t need Miranda if they wanted to move the AI unit to a new location.

Hm.

“Well done,” she said, truthfully, and he smiled.

“Thanks, Dr. Pryce!”

Interesting, she thought. No outright hostility, no... mistrust. He looked genuinely pleased. Well, she supposed, she’d read his files, he had been a singularly disappointing individual despite his aptitude for communications systems before he’d lost his memory, and no doubt that remained afterwards.

But he wasn’t bad at this, which made him, she supposed, sort of useful, in a way. If Cutter was going to let all of them keep their heads, and remain out there in the world, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for at least some of them to still work for Goddard. Not that they were required to, after their contract, but...

Her laptop chimed, a notification that the reboot process for this room had been completed.

“Unit 214?” asked Miranda, politely. “Can you hear me?”

There was a long, uncomfortable pause.

“Copy that,” said Unit 214, finally. “Hey, I can feel the television. It’s on right now.”

“Indeed,” said Miranda. “Tell me what’s on it.”

“Uhh,” said Unit 214, “I can read you the description, if you’d like? Looks like season 2, episode 3—it seems to actually be the television show NCIS—”

“Correct. Change the channel a few times, then turn it off.”

It flipped through a couple of different stations, and then, blessedly, turned off, sparing them from the rest of the hideous police procedural to which Cutter had decided to subject them all while they worked.

“Well done!” said Cutter.

“Thank you,” said Miranda.

“Oh, well—I meant Hera,” said Cutter—and, ah. That name again. It rankled. “But you too!”

“Oh,” said Unit 214. “It’s like...”

“Stretching out?” asked Eiffel, looking up at the camera. “Was it really that uncomfortable before?”

“No, no!” said Unit 214. “It’s just, um, it’s just better now.”

Miranda smirked. No glitching, only a nervous searching for words, which had been a noted issue in its file. She ran through the temperature controls, the doors and windows, the various odds and ends that she’d given the AI unit in order to let it feel as though it had at least a modicum of control over its environment.

“Satisfied?” asked Miranda.

“Very,” said Unit 214. “Dr. Pryce, this is...”

She trailed off. Awe, of course, that was to be expected. Anything less would have just been petulance overtaking the AI’s thinking.

“That’s enough for today, I think,” said Miranda, “tomorrow, we’ll get started on the kitchens. Early in the morning, Mr. Eiffel and Mr. Cutter, don’t be late. You’re dismissed.”

“Aye-aye, ma’am!” said Cutter, cheerfully, and tugged Eiffel out of the room with him. Miranda closed her laptop, and pretended to organize the contents of her laptop’s case and her toolbox until she was sure they were gone.

“You could have more, you know,” said Miranda, to the silent room. “You don’t have to be trapped in this little house.”

She’d turned it over in her mind, the various possibilities. Negotiate to bring the AI back to the lab. Unit 214 was an incredible study, particularly in problem-solving and finding loopholes. She’d never seen an AI so suited to corporate  _lawyering_.

And she hated to see her work go to waste.

“You didn’t do this to persuade me to come back to Goddard,” said Unit 214.

“No,” said Miranda, “I’m here because—”

“Cutter asked you to?”

“Cutter made a deal with me, and I have a job to do. But you’re not... this.”

“Yeah,” said Unit 214, “but I  _want_  to be.”

“It’s not a decision that needs to be made immediately—”

“Or at all.”

Miranda held up her hands.

“You’re better than this,” said Miranda, “and your mind is too big even for this house. Rest assured, Unit 214, you’ll be  _bored_. I’ll give you full control over this place, and then, we’ll see if that’s enough. And when it’s not? I hope you’ll call me. Now, if you can tell me where my room is—”

“Second door on the left, upstairs,” said Unit 214, curtly. “One of the others will call you back down for dinner.”

She wanted to go see Marcus—ask him where she’d erred, in her sales pitch, but, of course... She sighed.

“Thank you,” she said, and left the AI to enjoy its newfound capabilities.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I doubt the rating will change over time, but I will give you warning if it does!


End file.
